be brave and be kind
by piratesmiley
Summary: After the events of T.R.A.C.K.S., in which Simmons asks May to teach her self-defense.


Spoilers for T.R.A.C.K.S. Cross-posted to AO3.

* * *

When she heard the knock at the door, May said nothing. She didn't have to. She knew whoever it was would tentatively enter anyway. Besides, May learned the value of silence a long time ago.

It was Simmons. Quietly, she placed a mug of tea on the tray next to the pilot. May's face did not betray the mild surprise she felt. It was Fitz's turn to bring her refreshments. For some reason, this crew was hell-bent on taking care of each other, especially after it became apparent that they weren't really able to take care of each other in the field. Somehow, May noticed in wry horror, they had domesticated camaraderie.

May nodded her head in thanks, but the young scientist didn't leave. Instead, she settled into the copilot's seat.

Out of the corner of her eye, May could see the young woman readying herself inside her head, gearing up to speak. She wondered if Jemma was trying to be brave.

"I wanted to ask you a favor, of sorts," she said, and then she waited for May to speak.

From what she could tell, Jemma Simmons was a brilliant mind wrapped up in an adolescent's need for approval and guidance and a scientist's thirst for knowledge. She was at odds with herself. So May took pity.

"What is it?"

"I was hoping you would teach me self-defense."

That made sense. There came a breaking point for everyone who saw combat, and the breaking point for Simmons had clearly been when Skye was hit. Ultimately Simmons was the only one could help her in a medical capacity, and that left the entire burden on her young shoulders (not that the others hadn't been scrambling for their fair share of blame). Plus May had heard talk (mostly from a raving Fitz screaming about his partner throwing herself onto a dendrotoxin grenade) that Simmons was a little too quick to sacrifice herself. That was a dangerous mindset for her to be in.

"Agent Ward has been training Skye," May responded, not as an accusation or suggestion – a deconstructed question. _Why me?_

"Yes," the girl acknowledged. "But I would rather learn from you. You're always calm under pressure, which I have _never_ been," she said, with a certain amount of blankness in her face.

There was a moment of silence as May contemplated this. If she had to guess? Post-Traumatic Stress, severe anxiety, and hyper-vigilance. But May just assessed. Who would she be to judge, when she would be of the exact same mindset if she were in Simmons' place?

"I just want to be able to take more control," Simmons said suddenly, barely above a whisper. She coughed, remembering herself. "You can say no, obviously, I know that you're very busy—" She started to ramble, but May cut her off.

"05:00 tomorrow, meet me in the loading bay."

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Jemma sink in with relief. "Thank you," she said.

May dipped her head in response.

* * *

At 4:15 the next morning, Jemma slipped out of Fitz's room.

She rustled into yesterday's sweater to make the three-foot trip to her own bunk. She stripped herself back down to throw on sweats and then fixed her nest of hair into a ponytail.

It wasn't sexual.

That would be her first defense, when they were found out. She could say it with certainty, and they would know she was not lying: they had never had sex.

But she couldn't help the feeling that that was even more incriminating.

She just _needed_ him. Everyone would think she was crazy, wanting to spend even more time with him when they were already attached at the hip professionally. But the closeness he provided was high-octane comfort. And she needed that right now. She couldn't explain it and she didn't want to talk about it; she just knew that it was necessary if she wanted to keep a grasp on what was happening to all of them.

And even Fitz didn't understand it – he seemed so surprised every time she knocked on his door late at night, when she would crawl towards him without a sign of apprehension and allow herself to be engulfed by his sheets, his scent, his arms.

No, that certainly didn't sound platonic.

They had never discussed it. The first night was an accident – they had gone days without sleep working on a way to fix Skye, and only once they were both certain she'd be fine did they rest, and she ended up falling asleep in his bed while saying her usual lingering goodnight, and without thinking he curled around her and passed out too.

And it wouldn't have been an issue, but the next night she tried to go back to her own bed. That's when the nightmares started.

There were certain things she had to do, and number one on her list was take care of her friends. Skye, so pale and airless, so red, was an image that clung to her, ground into her pores like dirt, and she couldn't wash it away. So after waking up drenched in sweat, eyes brimming, she started to crawl in with Fitz.

It wasn't professional. But she was starting to think they were all past that point, all six of them.

She tiptoed silently to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

* * *

At 4:30 in the morning, May left Ward's room.

It was purely sexual. That would be her first and only defense. No more was necessary.

(Even if she was starting to think it wasn't true anymore.)

She headed straight for the showers after grabbing her kit and tried to burn away the knot of doubt from where it burrowed incessantly further into the pit of her chest.

She had lived a certain way for a long time. She didn't know precisely what Coulson told the others of her history - she knew that she hadn't revealed a word, and it wasn't for mystery's sake, but for survival - but they must have a certain grasp of _before_ and _after_.

May could hardly remember her life _before_. Her memory was a tunnel; there was a faint light coming from behind her, but once you're in you can only go forward. At the very least just to see what's on the other side.

She lived a stark life, and it was a fierce and deliberate choice. Nobody knew better than Coulson, no matter how it looked, that she _chose _to join him and guide the Bus. He could be compelling, but she made her own choices.

And she had to stand by them.

This made the situation with Ward all the more uneasy. She wasn't sure exactly where she landed, but at some point she had to come down somewhere.

She emerged from the bathroom to see Ward standing there. "You didn't have to sneak out," he said, trying to be playful, but he was still too young to mask his accusation.

"On the contrary: I have things to do," she responded, and brushed past him to get dressed.

She tried not to let the door hit him as she closed it.

* * *

Jemma made it downstairs three minutes early, nervous like the first day of class. May came in right on time, like the machine everyone made her out to be.

"Do you trust me?" May started.

"Yes," Jemma said decisively.

May sat cross-legged on the floor. After a moment's confusion, Jemma followed.

"You want to learn the steps to the dance, but first you have to learn the music. We will meditate for at least half-an-hour every day before I teach you blocking and defense. Got it?"

Jemma nodded. She felt the willingness to learn tug at her, just like at the Academy. But she could not forget how much higher the stakes were now.

"You need to slip into a place where you are at peace. The pain you feel, the pressure, will bear too much on your actions. It'll make your movements sloppy. If you want to learn control, you have to control every aspect of your being."

May eyed her charge carefully. Jemma was nodding, sucking in breath like she was preparing for a battle. And it would be a battle in some sense. But May knew she needed to be careful of doing more damage than good.

Her tone softened. "I'm not telling you not to feel."

Simmons seemed to look directly into her eyes now, focusing.

"Just find a balance."

"Balance," Jemma repeated.

So they began.

* * *

The hum of the Bus was what Jemma found most helpful. She appreciated the idea that they were constantly in motion, and the gentle vibration in the air and on the dock floor focused her into a state of silence.

She was beginning to see why May liked this.

Jemma had never thought to empty her mind. She hadn't stopped shoving things - math, science, literature - into it since birth. It had always been the defining factor, the thing that made her special. It had never occurred to her that it might be helpful to clean up shop every once in a while.

After what seemed like a very long time, May cleared her throat. Jemma opened her eyes.

"Did you fall asleep?"

Instantly she was flustered, until she realized the older woman was joking. She smiled.

May got to her feet and offered her pupil a hand. Jemma gladly took it.

"We'll start with the bag. Give it a few punches. ...Keep your arms up. ...Good girl."

* * *

Simmons didn't like hospitals. That was one of the reasons why she never bothered to become a practicing medical doctor. Of course, that fact hardly seemed to matter to anyone. She was always diagnosing and stitching and medicating people anyway.

She followed the bleak, sanitized hallway, a familiar path, to the end.

"I'm so bored, Simmons. I'm ready to shimmy down the fire escape."

Jemma smiled. "I forbid it."

She grabbed Skye's chart. Her recovery, in any other context, would've been remarkable. But it's not so scientifically interesting when it's your friend's life. After they found a cure for her abnormal physiology she started healing, but not before catching infection and giving everyone another scare. She seemed to be doing okay now, though.

"Did you bring me anything?" Skye looked eager. She looked like herself, except white-cotton clad and a bit wheezy.

Not that it mattered, when all Jemma could see was blood. She took a seat next to her bed.

"Not today. Coulson says if you stop flinging Jell-O at the nurses I can bring you your laptop, though."

Skye darkened suddenly. "Why can't I come back to the Bus? I can sit there doing nothing just as well as I do here."

"Because the Bus isn't a fully-outfitted SHIELD hospital."

Skye huffed. "I don't like being marooned here, away from the team. What if you guys get a lead; are you just going to leave me here?"

She didn't like seeing her friend upset, but she also didn't like seeing her dead.

"We really haven't been looking for a lead, Skye. Coulson set-up teams to follow up on Quinn's operations, but for the moment we're taking it easy, _just like you should be_."

It was a poorly-veiled beg.

"Trust me, I'm taking it easy. I don't even have to get up to pee."

* * *

When she got back to the lab, Fitz was working on some upgrades for one of the DWARFs.

"How is she?"

"Bored."

"That's what she said to me yesterday. I tried to entertain her with my specs for a redesigned holocom but she threw a spork at me and said if I didn't shut up she'd morphine herself into oblivion."

Jemma offered a wan smile.

"How much longer do you think they'll keep her at the hospital?"

She gave him a look. "As long as I tell them to."

He returned her look. "When she figures out you're the one keeping her there, she's going to bite your head off."

She stopped fiddling with her gel electrophoresis kit (a fun little thing, really, a distraction of an experiment) and whirled around.

"I am under strict orders from Coulson, Fitz. She hasn't finished PT yet. I'm not letting her back on the Bus until I'm certain nothing's going to go wrong." She couldn't look at his face; she stared hard at the floor until it began to waver.

His voice came from closer, suddenly. "Do you think you're ever going to get to that point?"

She doesn't answer.

* * *

"These are all techniques you learned at the Academy."

"I never thought I'd need them. It was honestly the one and only time in my life I ever blew off a class."

May smiled a bit. Jemma sweated, breathless on the mat where May just slammed her down.

"You're picking it up, Simmons," she said, and offered a hand.

Jemma took it.

* * *

May wasn't even in the room when the argument started, and that's what pissed her off the most. The argument itself was an inevitability. Coulson had just summoned them to the deck; she had just barely left the cockpit before she heard the shouting.

She broke into a sprint.

The first thing she saw was Fitz and Simmons on the couch, cradling their faces, the definition of anxiety. And then her eyes jumped to the two furiously shouting men.

It was a lot of finger-pointing and masculine gibberish at this point, so she put a hand on each of their chests and shoved them apart.

"Is this how it's going to be now?" She asked, low and deadly, instantly enraged. "One of ours gets hit and we all fall apart?"

Ward refused to look her in the eyes.

"You're hashing this out right now."

They both looked up to her now.

"Fitz and Simmons, you're dismissed," Coulson said, without looking at them.

They looked relieved, but May stopped them. "No," May said firmly. "They are adults. They can handle this, unlike the two of you." May looked directly at Jemma. "Right?"

Jemma matched her stare and some of the anxiety left her face. She nodded.

They were all standing now.

Ward starts in killer instinct. "I don't know what you filled her head with, but if you hadn't put her on the warpath she wouldn't have gone in there alone in the first place."

Coulson said nothing, just kept his stare.

"I'm her SO, and you went around me."

"I'm your boss, and I'm Skye's boss too. She takes her orders from me," he thundered.

"And that turned out well for her, didn't it?" Ward spat, just barely holding it together. "Time to ship me off to Blonsky now, huh?" he continued, and instantly May could see she was missing a piece of the conversation.

"You looking for a way out?" Coulson spat, voice hard and tight.

"Maybe I should be. Hill told you I wasn't made for a team, and working on this Bus was _not_ what you said it'd be."

May felt the fury grow in her. This wasn't Ward. This was a scared little boy casting blame to overshadow his feelings. Yes, she was furious.

But Simmons got to him first.

"You're just going to abandon us now?" Her eyes were fiercely trained on him, brow set. Ward whirled around to face her and instantly winced down from rage to shame.

She stepped forward angrily. "You can't take the easy road out, Ward. You can't run scared because someone got hurt."

"I'm not running scared," he argued, jaw clenched but tone softer, reliving the guilt of leaving the three of them behind, defenseless on the train.

"Yes, you are," Fitz started in. "You can't just leave now. Besides, imagine how furious Skye will be if you've gone insane in her absence," Fitz added. It was supposed to be a bit funny, but there was a serious truth within it, and May watched Ward's face fall a little further.

"If I can't protect you guys, why am I even here?" And suddenly Ward was very exposed; he knew it, everyone did.

"Because you're a part of this team," Coulson said quietly, and May knew that was as much of an apology as Ward could hope for.

"I think we're a bit more than a team," Simmons said suddenly, softly. "I think what happened to Skye proves it." But she seemed to shut herself up.

"Go on, Simmons," May encouraged.

"We're all terrified because we love Skye and we almost lost her. If we weren't so scared right now, you and Coulson wouldn't be fighting. And I wouldn't be – I'm just saying, we're more than a team now."

They all took that in for a moment. May felt conflicted, strangely proud of Simmons but also worried that she might be right.

They were all emotionally compromised.

* * *

She wasn't supposed to eavesdrop, obviously. But she did anyway, on instinct.

Shortly after their confrontation, Ward took his leave to visit Skye. Today it was May's turn to check on Skye, and bring back the results of some tests Simmons had ordered at the hospital (she was also charged with bringing Skye her iPod, a healthy concession considering she hadn't stopped terrorizing her nurses), but by the time she arrived there, Ward was still sitting by her side. Instinctively May lingered out of sight in the doorway.

"Are you kidding me? You don't have anything to apologize for, Ward," she heard Skye say. "It's not your fault, it's not Coulson's fault either. It's Quinn's fault. And according to May you guys took care of him."

"I just—" Ward started.

"Shh, it's okay," Skye said softly, and there was a long bout of silence.

May decided to come back later.

* * *

Jemma was restless that night in Fitz's bed. She couldn't sleep; her eyes were wide and unblinking and staring at the ceiling. She couldn't stop thinking.

He noticed.

"Hey," he poked her, "what's wrong?"

"Ward's got me thinking…"

"Yeah?"

It was easier to say in the darkness. "Maybe it _was_ a mistake. You were right; I dragged you here."

"You didn't drag me. I willingly followed."

She wanted to ask why. She wanted the answer to be something concrete.

"You were right then, and you were right earlier when you were telling off Ward. We belong here, all six of us." She felt him turning in the dark to prop his head up and face her, even though she knew he could hardly see. She didn't turn though, staying firmly face up.

"We're going to be okay."

There was a moment of silence as she tried to close her eyes and believe him; and suddenly there was something pressed to her cheek briefly, warm and soft, and she was so shocked her eyes flew open.

After a moment she relented, pushing him down on his back so she could curl up on his chest. His arms went around her instantly, but this time it didn't comfort her. This was possibly the first time in her life that she couldn't tell what he was thinking and felt she could not ask.

* * *

"You have all of the steps down, Simmons. I told you – you knew this stuff already."

"But it'll immediately leave my head in any real situation. Oh, perhaps you could stage an attack?"

May side-eyed her. She seemed to be serious, which was worrying.

"You're going to be fine."

"There has to be something else you can teach me!"

May took a moment to consider her. Jemma Simmons was nothing if not thorough. She had trained harder than most of the people May had met in her own Academy days; she had given her full focus and attention to May every day for three weeks. And it was true that Simmons remembered a lot of things from her basic training. She just needed to brush up on it.

But May could still see the panic in her eyes and the tension in her stance. Jemma may excel at preparation, but she couldn't prepare for everything. And May didn't know if she trusted herself to give her any instruction beyond that of physical defense, when she doubted her own emotional one.

"You wanted to learn defense," May said finally.

"Perhaps I should have elaborated. I don't want to feel helpless ever again, May," and she was dead-set and grave.

"Maybe I _should _stage an attack," May muttered, utterly lost as to what she should do with the responsibility of Jemma Simmons' sanity.

"Goody!" Jemma crowed, and she was not the least bit sarcastic.

* * *

That night, Jemma tried to sleep on her own. Fitz's face stayed perfectly blank when she denied him, but he lingered too long. She tried not to feel bad. She needed to get stronger, just in case.

* * *

May was preparing two cups of tea (she and Simmons had started an unspoken turn-taking, because neither could go without it in the morning anyway) when Coulson entered.

"You're up early," she said simply.

"I'm heading to the hospital."

"You think Skye is going to be awake at this hour?"

"I know she is. She's been texting me begging for her laptop," he responded, and they shared a smile over her audacity.

"You did a number on Ward," she said, and she was actually surprised that the words came out of her mouth.

"_You_ did a number on Ward," he replied, and she gave him a look. He held up his hands in surrender. "He brought it up in the middle of the train op, so I snapped at him. Said I would send him to Alaska if anyone got hurt."

May took that in, understanding a bit better his outburst.

"I thought you trusted me," she said, but she wasn't upset.

"I do."

"You trust Ward too."

"Yes, I do," he confirmed. He picked up Skye's laptop case off the counter. "Melinda, Simmons was right about the team. Which means things are going to get messy."

She sighed into her mug. "I know."

* * *

"Simmons, come with me." It wasn't their normal training time, but this was a special case.

She ignored Fitz's look of surprise but caught the fact that Jemma wouldn't answer his questioning glance.

It didn't taken them long to walk over from the docking bay to the shooting range. Jemma looked sufficiently surprised.

"I'm going to teach you how to shoot without closing your eyes or hitting one of us by accident," May said with some amount of humor.

Jemma looked an appropriate mix of delighted and disgusted. When May first placed a pistol in her hands she stared at it for a long time, the gravity of what she was going to do weighing on her face. May wondered if this was a bad idea, considering their teammate was recently almost taken from them with a gunshot wound. But before May could begin to really worry, Simmons straightened up, nodding to herself with a newfound determination.

May ran her through the procedure and watched the young scientist commit it to memory. She wasn't too terrible of a shot when she focused; and it didn't really matter if she made a horribly distressed face at each bang, as long as she hit her target.

"You didn't want to tell Fitz where we were going," May mentioned.

Jemma sighed instantly. "I haven't told him that you've been training me," she said.

May considered that. "You think he won't approve?"

"It's not up to him to approve or not," Jemma said, "I just don't want him to worry."

"Jemma," May said, startling her out of her trained stare at the target. "If you think he would worry, maybe he has reason to."

Something shifted on her face and she looked down at the floor. "I'm the only thing keeping Skye in the hospital," she admitted, voice thick with shame.

May knew that. Everyone knew that except for Skye.

She stepped forward and placed a hand on the younger woman's shoulder. "You're worried about her. That's normal. But even if you keep her in the hospital for a year, the worry won't stop. At some point we have to move on and get back to work."

And May didn't even stiffen when Simmons launched into her arms and whispered a thank you.

* * *

Both May and Simmons were surprised to see Ward at Skye's bedside when they arrived. Jemma had insisted they go straight there after their session.

"Hey!" Skye said brightly, a hand of UNO cards pressed to her chest. Ward had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. "What are you guys doing here?"

"I've just spoken to your doctors," Simmons started, even though that was a lie, "and they've decided that you can come home tomorrow."

"Really?" Her eyes flit excitedly between Jemma's slightly nervous ones and May's calm, contented ones.

"Really," Jemma answered.

"That's interesting," Ward started with an arched brow, "because they didn't give any indication of that earlier."

"Well, things change," Jemma said pointedly, giving him a look.

Skye squealed a little bit. "Thank god," she said. "Why do we have to wait until tomorrow? Can't I just come with you now?"

"No, you absolutely cannot," Jemma insisted.

"Why?"

"Because you haven't given us proper time to prepare for your homecoming," Jemma said primly, as though that was obvious.

May smirked. "I'll call Coulson and tell him the good news."

Skye offered her arms out to Simmons, and she gladly accepted.

* * *

Ward left the girls to it and jogged after May.

"Simmons gave the go ahead. Skye can come home tomorrow...I know...let Fitz know, too...alright."

Once she hung up the phone, she turned to Ward.

"What made her finally decide?"

"She decided it was time to let go," May responded, eyebrow arching. "This is going to be a fresh start for all of us."

Ward nodded, understanding her meaning. "Here," he said, outstretching his hand, "let's have a very professional handshake."

In spite of herself, May smiled, and took it.

* * *

By the morning there was a large painted banner on the backs of old briefing memos that said WELCOME HOME SKYE, and in small, harshly crossed out writing below it _thanks for not dying_, which was Fitz's attempt at being funny; as well as a crew worth of semi-weepy agents that she called her team. Coulson, who picked her up that morning, had insisted she ride in a wheelchair the long walk from the hospital to the dock, but she stood up and walked up the ramp, slowly weaving between Lola and the SUV to stop in front of the crescent-moon team, smiling and trying not to cry.

Simmons let out a great sigh of relief. May was right. She had been suspending herself in worry; relief came when she gave in. Without thinking, she looked to Fitz, who was smiling brightly at the merriment as Skye accepted a hug from May, and her smile peeked out under the influence of his.

* * *

That night, Jemma went to her own bed, wrongly assuming that the bulk of her terrors had disappeared. It was only a few hours before the nightmares compelled her to relocate under his covers.

* * *

It was a few days, still, before they got wind of a new case. Coulson called them all to be debriefed, but he yielded to Skye. She would decide if now was the time.

"Are you kidding me? I've literally been having dreams about a good, old-fashioned stakeout, or some super cool bad-guy hacking. Where's our nondescript white van? Let's _do this_," Skye harped, with enough enthusiasm to surprise them once again. You just couldn't keep this girl down.

The op was a pretty standard one: a mysterious and scientifically-engaging anomaly, a bit of light reconnaissance on a misguided telekinetic on the Index, and a sting on the people misguiding him.

Of course, the sting didn't go quite as planned.

Ward got pinned down by a few enemy agents, requiring Fitz to go in and create a diversion with the DWARFs (which was quickly becoming his favorite use for them, much to Jemma's dismay). Meanwhile May snuck through the air ducts to drop in conveniently behind the panicking telekinetic to lend support to Coulson while he tried to talk him down. Of course, neither Skye nor Simmons was willing to stay in the van (even though Simmons really thought Skye should_ just stay in the van_); but Simmons couldn't sit idly by while Fitz was sneaking around in there without her and Skye couldn't sit idly by in general. So the two careened into the building without a thought. Once Ward had taken out the combatants he ran straight into the pair of them, and started arguing with Skye about her safety (what else is new), forgetting completely about looking for their target, the Clairvoyant's new pawn. This gave Simmons the perfect opportunity to sneak away and go looking for Fitz as Ward manhandled Skye into returning to the van.

Unbeknownst to her, Fitz had just come running out of the building after hearing over coms that Jemma was coming in, hoping to stop her. May and Coulson came out moments after, asset tranqued and being dragged between them. Fitz became agitated almost immediately, so Skye gave up listening to Ward, letting him just shout at her while she tapped into the security cameras to try and locate Simmons more quickly. The screen flickered to Jemma just as she'd been discovered by the target. And that's when Fitz really started to panic.

Before he could open his mouth May grabbed him by the shoulders. "Fitz, watch the monitor. I'm going in after her. _Watch the monitor_," she said and started to sprint back into the building. Fitz – as well as the others – turned back to the monitor to watch as the man began his sinister approach.

However, as soon as he was within striking distance Simmons landed a punch straight to his jaw. He reeled back in shock, heaving in instant anger. He swung back, sure to cause some damage, but Jemma dodged it and locked her hand around wrist, twisting his arm back painfully before grabbing his head and slamming it into her outthrusted knee. The now dazed man took a swift kick to the face before crumpling to the ground.

That was the moment when May ran in. They watched as she looked from the body on the ground to a panting Jemma and back again. She smiled. Jemma looked like she might be sick. They had no audio, but Fitz watched as Jemma spoke, and May nodded, leaning down to cuff the now unconscious man. Between the two of them, they dragged the body out of frame. Fitz didn't realize until just then that his mouth was blown wide open in shock. He looked over at Skye to find her the same way. And Ward. And even Coulson.

There was a long, tense moment of silence before Simmons and May emerge from the building. Upon seeing their faces, Jemma stopped cold.

"They saw all of that, didn't they?"

"Yes, they did."

"Oh, bloody hell."

* * *

And, to Fitz's credit, the only scrap of panic he let slip out was a loud "_what the fuck was that_?!" before climbing into the back seat of the van and staring at his hands in awed silence.

* * *

"So you're training Simmons," Coulson said upon entering the cockpit. He didn't sound angry, just somewhat bemused, as he set down a mug of tea near her arm.

"She asked me to."

"I'm just surprised she was able to keep it a secret."

"It was her decision. She wasn't doing so well," May defended.

"None of us were," he replied seriously, before twisting it into a joke. "Then again, our biochemist, who failed her field assessment, just single-handedly incapacitated a Centipede agent. So maybe we're going to be okay."

May smiled briefly in response as Coulson let the companionable silence take over. But after a moment she once again felt the need to admit something.

"Ward and I are done," she offered.

He didn't say anything for a long time. "Probably for the best," is what he finally decided on.

May elected not to tell him that Ward might be distracted by a whole new _something_ already. It would be kind of fun to see Phil freak out a little once he did figure it out.

"This is going to be a new start for all of us," he continued.

May side-eyed him, smiling. "I was thinking the same thing."

* * *

Jemma wondered if maybe Fitz didn't want her to come to bed with him tonight.

He was silent until they got back to the base, and silent when she followed him into the lab. And he was silent while he wrapped her hand, which had become bruised and cut in her assault. It seemed he didn't know what to say; he just bandaged her up, holding her hand like it was something delicate, lingering like it was something fleeting.

So she was hesitant when she knocked on the door.

But he beckoned her in. His side table light was still on, casting yellow over the bed. She went in arms first, wrapping them around his torso snugly as she got under the covers.

"May's been training me," she said into his shoulder.

"Yeah, that's become apparent," he said wryly, and she was almost surprised that he didn't sound mad. She squeezed him tighter. "You didn't go to Ward because he was unstable and would've blabbed about it. You needed to do it to feel more in control after what happened."

She closed her eyes and smushed into him further, nodding because he was painfully correct as always, and her lips ended up pressed to his collarbone.

"I'm sorry," because she _was_ sorry for lying, even if it was necessary.

"I'm just worried," he said. She didn't want to know how his face twisted when he said it so she didn't pull back.

"I knew you would be," she replied instead.

She could nearly feel him thinking, feel him deciding what to say and what to hide. Unthinkingly she placed a kiss, deliberate, to the base of his neck at nearly the same moment he started to speak again.

"I think…I think this is what I was worried about. When we were first talking about joining the team. I was worried it would change us."

"I've always been neurotic, Fitz," she said dryly, but she knew that wasn't what he was getting at.

"But it's a new environment. And new stress." He took a moment to think. "You jumped out of a plane, Jemma. You took a _grenade_, without knowing what it was and without thinking that you could _die_." He sounded utterly distraught. She didn't want to see his face now either, but it was time to tell the truth. She pulled back to look at him.

"Fitz, I don't want you to misunderstand when I tell you that I would do _anything_ to protect you," she said, and it's the strongest she's felt in a while.

A series of expressions colored his face from alarm (_how dare you put your safety ahead of mine)_ to belligerence (_I would do the same for you, so you can just stop now_) to confusion. He settled on the last one. "How would I misunderstand that?"

Her heart stopped beating. "Because you might wrongly assume that I feel that way because we're partners, when really it's because I'm in love with you, 100 percent, and I'm exhausted, truly too exhausted to continue pretending that's not the reason."

Instant embarrassment forced her to press her face back into his chest. She continued. "It's a good thing that I trained with May, Fitz. Because I'm going to keep throwing myself in between you and danger no matter what. I might as well know what I'm doing."

She let him think for a moment.

"You're right," he said finally, and in any other context she would have smiled at the pain those words caused him. But this wasn't about friendly competition. "I'll talk to Ward in the morning. I'll see if he'll take me on."

She half-smiled into his chest.

"Look at me," he murmured. She obliged. His hands went up to her face. "Just promise we won't forget about this," he said, and she didn't have to ask what _this_ was.

"Oh, Fitz," she said, because how could he worry about that?

"_Promise_."

"I promise."

He leaned up and kissed her once, softly, briefly, to seal it.

She leaned over to turn out the light.


End file.
